My heart stopped.
I stood there looking at it for a long moment.
Then I decided to use it.
The very next morning, someone began pounding on my front door.
I looked through the window.
Gerald was standing on the porch, his face purple, a lawyer’s letter crushed in his fist.
Before I even had a chance to open my mouth, he pointed at me and shouted:
“How could you?!”
I opened the door calmly, in my robe, holding my coffee.
“Good morning, Gerald,” I said.
“Would you like to come in and talk about Lakeside?”
PART 2
To understand what was in that box, I have to take you back twenty-three years.
Before Gerald’s company.
Before he was “the founder.”
When we were both twenty-seven and broke and brilliant and in love.
Gerald was a decent programmer.
I was a better one.
That’s not ego — it’s just true, and back then he’d have said so himself.
